Many retailers such as grocery store chains offer loyalty card programs. Typically, a customer that signs up for the program will provide personal information, including household demographic data, to the retailer. In exchange, the customer will receive an identification card or other device which identifies that customer as a participant in the loyalty program.
During the checkout process at one of the retailer's stores, the customer will present their loyalty card (or other device) so that details of their transaction can be linked to the customer for later use by the retailer. For example, the loyalty card can comprise a card containing a bar code and/or a magnetic strip which is read by a point-of-sale device (e.g., a cash register system) in order to identify the customer by, for example, an unique loyalty program identification number read from the loyalty card.
In exchange for participating in the loyalty program, the customer may typically receive product discounts which are only available to program participants. In some instances, incentives may be presented to the customer at checkout, such as in the form of one or more coupons printed on the back of the customer's receipt. The customer may redeem the coupon(s) upon their next visit to the store. In other instances, a retailer or manufacturer may send an incentive (e.g., a coupon) to the customer (e.g., via postal mail or electronic mail) for later redemption. In both of these types of promotional activities, the incentive is presented to the consumer at a time when they are typically not making purchasing decisions, thus reducing the effectiveness of these types of promotions.
Loyalty card programs do not allow customer's to access their own shopping histories. Instead, retailers and manufacturers will use the shopping history data for their own internal purposes and to target various incentives (e.g., coupons) to particular customers based upon their shopping histories, demographics and/or various other factors. The retailer or manufacturer benefits in that they can target promotional activities to certain customers, and can even evaluate the success of their promotional activities based on the subsequent purchasing behavior of the targeted customers. In addition, loyalty programs can generate a wealth of data related to consumer behavior and purchasing habits—information that the retailer may even sell to other retailers or manufacturers.